@Jace: There are some snippets of footage taken from the gameplay videos shown at E3 in there, but you are right there isn't really anything new there. Seems like they are only willing to show the first hour or so of the game at the moment, it all looks like it takes place on the ship taking them to 1313

I remember struggling on the last part of Sonic Adventure 2 where you had a limited amount of time and kept switching between the characters to stop the death egg firing or exploding or something and eventually giving up. I'm surprised I didn't finish it to be honest since that sort of thing would have bothered me a lot more then than does now (I don't even make it to the last stage on more recent purchases)

I kind of agree that I don't see where Portal can go from here that would add much to the series, that being said I hope the team within valve behind it go on to work on a spiritual successor of some sort in the future. Comedy in video games has rarely been done so well so I'd hate to never see a game of that tone come around again at some point even if it had nothing to do with Portal universe.

Depends who's writing him I suppose, most of the time I enjoy his light-hearted approached to fighting crime though (not there he doesn't have his whiney moments) it's a nice contrast to a lot of the more brooding heroes out there.

I really enjoy all these meet the videos (and even enjoy Team Fortress 2 even though it's only something I play now and again) but they kind of make me want Valve to get back to something more story driven more than anything. All they seem to have on the horizon at the moment is multiplayer games, I don't particularly care if it's a new ip or an old one, I'd just like another great story driven single-player valve game.

Your description of the Halo storyline is kind of reductive and often wrong.

The use of the Halo never changes, it is designed to wipe out sentient life in all of the games, the covenant always saw it as a holy structure created by the forerunners and believed that activating them would allow them go the great journey that they believed the forerunners also went on. The halos would not exist at all without the flood since it was designed to kill them and their only means to reproduce (sentient life) so there is reasoning behind their inclusion.

This didn't change the use of the halo between any of the games and it was mostly made pretty clear in the first game how everything fitted together. I also disagree that the covenant were generic, in a world of shooters containing space marines and zombies I found it a nice change to have a race of colourful and varied aliens, their bug like, curved architecture was also pretty unique.

Also the master chief is not silent.

That being said despite finding the later games after three to be reasonably solid shooters I agree that the franchise has been playing it a bit too safe and reach felt a bit stale. 4 looks like a step in the right direction and the way they are handling multiplayer with the spartan ops stuff certainly sounds pretty unique, it's still quite early to say either way how much it will change the previous formula.